Slight dip in Las Vegas home prices as investors back off

For just the third time in more than two years, Las Vegas home prices have slipped a little.

The median sales price of previously owned single-family homes in Southern Nevada last month was $192,000, down 1.5 percent from March but still up 15 percent from a year ago, according to a new report from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Housing prices plunged during the recession but have been soaring at one of the fastest rates nationally the past two years, thanks in large part to investor demand for cheap rental homes.

However, GLVAR President Heidi Kasama said she’s not surprised the market is “starting to level off a bit.”

“Prices have to balance out eventually,” she said in the report.

Faced with rising prices they helped create, investors have been scaling back on local purchases. And homeowners, perhaps emboldened by the market’s rebound, are seeking more and more money for their houses and increasingly not getting any bites.

Buyers paid cash for 41 percent of the used homes that sold last month, down from a peak of almost 60 percent in February 2013, indicating a drop in investor spending.

Moreover, 6,420 single-family homes were on the market last month without any offers. That inventory more than doubled from a year ago, the GLVAR reported.

The median price of such listings was $249,900 last month, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier.